Neptune's Wind Speeds Obtained by Tracking Clouds in Voyager Images
Abstract
Images of Neptune obtained by the narrow-angle camera of the Voyager 2 spacecraft reveal large-scale cloud features that persist for several months or longer. The features' periods of rotation about the planetary axis range from 15.8 to 18.4 hours. The atmosphere equatorward of -53° rotates with periods longer than the 16.05-hour period deduced from Voyager's planetary radio astronomy experiment (presumably the planet's internal rotation period). The wind speeds computed with respect to this radio period range from 20 meters per second eastward to 325 meters per second westward. Thus, the cloud-top wind speeds are roughly the same for all the planets ranging from Venus to Neptune, even though the solar energy inputs to the atmospheres vary by a factor of 1000.
Additional Information
© 1989 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 4 August 1989; accepted 17 August 1989. This research was supported by NASA, primarily through the Voyager Project Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology (Caltech). H.B.H. acknowledges the support of a National Research Council Resident Research Associateship, sponsored by JPL-Caltech, through an agreement with NASA. We thank D. Hinson for pointing out an error in the preliminary calculations. We also thank D. A. Alexander, L. Wynn, and G. W. Garneau for processing and preparation of the photos.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 35945
- DOI
- 10.1126/science.245.4924.1367
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20121212-110740696
- NASA
- National Research Council of Canada
- Created
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2012-12-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences